Editorials: Where I rant to the wall about politics. And sometimes the wall rants back.

The ultimate question of Bush, Iraq, and genocide

Jerry Stratton, January 10, 2007

I mostly haven’t written about Iraq and I’m going to continue avoiding it for now, but I have written about mass murder. These articles about the court trial of Saddam and his aides for the Anfal mass murders highlight the problems with what some of the blogosphere calls “Bush Derangement Syndrome”. It doesn’t matter how barbaric someone is, if they oppose George Bush then that’s the story. It doesn’t matter what else happens; if it can be spun to show how much of a mistake going into Iraq was, then that’s the story.

The article that brought this rant on is ABC’s report on the trial of Saddam Hussein and some of his aides where they stand accused of the al-Anfal mass murders. The prosecution has video and audio confirmation of Saddam and his aides knowing exactly what they were doing: purging the Kurds by killing them. This was an atrocity that killed at least fifty thousand people, under the direct command of Hussein and for the direct purpose of an ethnic purge, and we’ve just been presented with audio proof that responsibility came from the top. Is that the story? No, that’s buried on page three. The story is (and this is the actual ABC news headline as I write this) “Court Drops Kurd Charges Against Saddam”.

That’s news? He’s dead. My guess is that while the Kurds would like to see him convicted, they’re quite happy with why he won’t be. ABC spends two pages on that obvious issue (minus his victims being happy, mind you), and mentions the video/audio proof in two short paragraphs—paragraphs that don’t mention the numbers killed or Hussein’s acknowledgment of what would happen and why they were doing it. And then, of course, the obligatory “violence continues in Iraq”. I had to go to the Malaysia Star to find out what the video and audio evidence held. Thank god for Google News, but that’s ridiculous.

This single-minded pursuit of one and only one angle reminds me of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. His philosopher-mice have been searching for the answer to the question of life for millions of years. They know the answer is forty-two. They need to work out a question that fits the answer.

“You see,” he said, “if they’re just sitting there in the studio looking very relaxed and, you know, just mentioning that they happen to know the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, and then eventually have to admit that in fact it’s Forty-two, then the show’s probably quite short. No follow-up, you see.”

It doesn’t matter how barbaric someone was, their actions aren’t newsworthy unless it feeds BDS. That’s the answer, and all questions must flow to that answer. Eventually, you would think they would have to admit that in fact Saddam Hussein was a genocidal mass murderer.

“Saddam Hussein and his cousin ‘Chemical Ali’ discussed how chemical weapons would exterminate thousands before unleashing them on Kurds in 1988, according to tapes played on Monday in a trial of former Iraqi officials.”

“The attacks were part of a long-standing campaign that destroyed almost every Kurdish village in Iraq—along with a centuries-old way of life—and displaced at least a million of the country's estimated 3.5 million Kurdish population.”

It might not be wrong to leave oppressive murderers in power in other countries. It is wrong to pretend that that isn’t what we’re doing. It is wrong to pretend that apathy in the face of oppression is a noble effort.

It’s a hypocritical form of divisiveness, calling for togetherness and reason whenever your side commits a crime, and engaging in unreasoning partisanship when you can find some way to pin it on others.